I’m not one to obsess over the historical antecedents of oppression. Perhaps because I take it as a given that civilization’s conflict-ridden unfolding has and always will be a dialectic of sorts between those with power and those without. But don’t let my intentional ignorance mislead you – my sympathies have always been with the oppressed because that’s how I was brought up – it’s just that a too-detailed analysis of the whys and wherefores of history sometime seem superfluous to the day’s realities. Bullies are a part of life, I’ve assumed, whether they are in the school playground, directing armed forces across the world stage, or slapping high tariffs on poor nations. All I need to know is that I should oppose oppressors, not appease them.
That simplistic model suited me fine for a while, that is until my reading and experience began to reveal certain patterns, including history’s masochistic tendency to repeat itself. Over the past year, for instance, I’ve been taking a deeper dive into the history of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. My most recent plunge was viewing the film Palestine 36, a 2025 historical drama written and directed by Annemarie Jacir. The film recounts the 1936–1939 Arab revolt against British colonial rule in Palestine prior to the formation of the Israeli state in 1948. It is powerful, critically acclaimed, and despite the fact that it is heavily slanted toward the Palestinian viewpoint, historically accurate. (But talk about a short film run! My movie-loving town of Santa Fe had exactly one screening of Palestine 36. Me and my 12 fellow audience members loved it!)
Coincidentally for me, this viewing was followed one day later by a webinar that was sponsored by the New Israel Fund (NIF) that gave a “boots on the ground” account of the current state of Jewish settler violence against Palestinians on the West Bank The West Bank at Boiling Point: Standing Up to Settler Violence • New Israel Fund. In case you’re wondering, the violence is worse now than when I wrote a post-October 7th essay on the intentional destruction of Palestinian crops and human life. That account can be found in my new book The Road to a Hunger-Free America (The Road to a Hunger-Free America: Selected Writings of Mark Winne: Mark Winne: Bloomsbury Academic – Bloomsbury).
Combined, these two exposures present the heartbreaking, gut-wrenching consequences of history-past and present which appears to be continuous river of blood that may be too wide to ever bridge. We’re reminded of the millennia of the world’s Jewry perpetually persecuted and yearning for a homeland. We see Britain, at the helm of its crumbling empire, including Palestine, enabling (The Balfour Declaration – 1917; the Peel Commission – 1936) the early Zionists to begin their “Exodus” into Palestine. We witness Arabs, whose tenacious love of their land is rooted in villages where they have tended the same olive trees and grazed the same pastures for centuries. Later, Britain would aide and abet Jewish settlers in seizing Arab land (today that task is performed by the Israeli Defense Forces) in the same way that the American calvary and federal government protected settlers who were trampling Native American land. Fort Apache-like, the early Jewish settlers built (and continue to build) walled compounds with watchtowers, supposedly to ward off hostile reactions from those whose land they are stealing.
Like their forebears of 90 years ago, today’s illegal Jewish settlements continue to push into the West Bank, destroying Palestinian homes, vehicles, and agricultural fields. The New Israel Fund webinar (11/10/25) painted an updated picture of the surge of settler killing and destruction that the United Nations has characterized as “the worst violence ever.” Providing what they call a “protective presence”, the NIF creates a human shield by courageously placing its staff and volunteers between the Palestinians and hostile Jewish West Bank settlers. The NIF activists include Israeli Jews, Jews from other countries, Palestinians, and non-Jewish supporters. They also support Palestinian resilience by rebuilding homes and replanting olive trees destroyed by rampaging settlers.
Here are some highlights from the webinar’s presenters:
Eid Suleiman Hathaleen (Palestinian) from Umm al-Khair village saw a friend murdered by a settler. IDF tactics now include placing outposts in Palestinian villages and accusing villagers of being members of Hamas as a justification for their harassment. He reported that among the NIF volunteers were two American activists who were deported by the Israeli government.
Ziv Stahl, Director of Yesh Din which is a NIF partner that documents settler violence on the West Bank and provides legal support to Palestinians. He said West Bank settlers want to double their numbers from the current level of about half a million to one million. He said, “hundreds of settlers raid villages destroying chicken coops, cars, and everything. The IDF often accompanies them.” He confirmed that the West Bank is much worse and more violent than it has been.
Rabbi Avi Dabush, a leader of Rabbis for Human Rights, organizes volunteers to plant trees and harvest olives. He said they go into the fields everyday but are becoming more worried about how to protect themselves as well as the Palestinian farmers. He referred to the settlers as “Jewish terrorists who think God is talking to them.” His international group of 50 volunteers were there for 22 days this fall harvesting olives and were attacked by settlers on 3 of those days. To their traditional arsenal of guns, clubs, and machetes, the settlers are now using drones, one of which harmed a female rabbi when it flew into her head. At one point, their group was surrounded by armed settlers who fired their guns in the air. The Rabbi went on to say that “The village’s Palestinian mayor said this happens all the time.”
In addition to providing direct assistance through solidarity with Palestinians, NIF’s Executive Director Daniel Sokatch described how the organization pushes back against the authoritarianism of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his supporters, whom Sokatch labeled the “MAGA Likud.” He summed up NIF’s combined service and policy role by invoking the quote “We comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
NIF’s biggest recipient of financial support is the World Central Kitchen (WCK). Nearly $3 millions of NIF funds are directed at WCK’s work preparing millions of meals for the severely afflicted people of Gaza. Tunde Wockman, one of WCK’s key staff in Gaza, ran down the numbers of what one can only imagine is the most excruciatingly difficult relief mission in recent times. She said that six large WCK kitchens around Gaza have prepared 160 million hot meals since October 7th. Additionally, WCK operates two large mobile bread trucks that bake 60,000 loaves a day; they are serving food in Gazan schools and distributing infant formula in what remains of the territory’s hospitals. But what I found most striking about Ms. Wockman’s report was their attention to the local food system. While they will normally source their food from local sources, that task is impossible in today’s Gaza. But when it comes to the workers, it’s a different story. “We make local people the architects of their own relief,” she said. In Gaza, WCK does not utilize well-intentioned volunteers from first world countries; they train and use over 1,000 Palestinians to prepare and distribute food to their own starving people.
So much hate and heartache have ground humanity down over the centuries, that it’s not surprising we feel compelled to celebrate the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem and Hanukkah’s triumph of light over darkness. Without the star and the candle, we’d be consumed by the darkness that threatens to crowd hope from our hearts. The long-running pain that is Palestine made me think of a few lines from Bruce Springsteen: “On the plains of Jordan/I cut my bow from the wood/Of this tree of evil/Of this tree of good.” We are all that one tree whose roots may at times be watered by the bloodlust of a thousand years. But it may also find nourishment from the good works of the likes of the New Israel Fund, Yesh Din, the World Central Kitchen, and many others whose yearning for the light may yet drown the darkness. That’s where I’m putting my money; I hope you might do the same.